Another age cheats squad? No please

Our coaches have started again. Must Nigeria always win age grade competitions? How have these pyrrhic victories helped our senior national team like we see in other climes? Anytime Nigerian coaches throw age-grade camping open, they unwittingly surrender the exercise to unscrupulous agents who pressurise them to pick their wards. Besides, the coaches get confused, leading to wrong selection of players.

What our coaches must know is that the NFF has since 2010 produced good U-15 lads who should form the nucleus of the country’s 2016 Olympic Games squad in Brazil. The others should come from our spectacular Golden Eaglets of 2009 and 2013. Those who were 14 and 15 in 2009 should be 21 and 22 in 2016. Of course, every member of the 2013 Eaglets is a potential member of the Olympic Eagles, if Samson Siasia is serious with this assignment.

Siasia should never be allowed to pick players from the Nigerian leagues. I dare say that there is no 22-year old in any cadre of our leagues. We must stop our coaches from parading boys who present sworn affidavits to back their ages. If we cannot find the right players here, then we can head for Europe where Chelsea FC’s manager Jose Mourinho introduced a 17-year old Dominic Solanke to play for the Blues in their 6-0 whiplash of Maribor in Tuesday’s Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge. Arsenal has a lot of Nigeria-born kids who can help us stem the ugly tide of always playing old men in age-grade competitions.

We must ensure that the bulk of players who make the Brazil 2016 Olympic Games squad should constitute the Super Eagles team to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. That is the way other football nations plan their Mundial. If we follow this route, it simply means that most of the players would have played together as a team for close to five years. I will suggest that the NFF, in constituting the Eagles’ technical crew, should find a role for Samson Siaisia and Gabra Manu in the Eagles. What this would do their teams is that they would know the playing pattern at the senior level and try it out with our junior teams. Scouting for players in our domestic leagues for a competition slated to hold in 2016 in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, is another fraudulent exercise of parading age cheats at the Samba Olympics.

We have been Olympic Games gold medalists in Atlanta in 1996. We were runners-up to Argentina at the Beijing Olympic Games, losing 1-0, no thanks to Di Maria’s cheeky lob over the head of goalkeeper Ambrose Vansekin. We have nothing else to prove in that cadre. What haunts us like a sore thumb is the fact that not many of the products of our youth teams have graduated into the Super Eagles.

Siasia has shown mastery of this cadre but he must spare us the thought of fielding players who would storm the camp with sworn affidavits to substantiate their ages. Siasia’s employers must tell the coach what they expect of him. We need to use our age-grade teams to discover and nurture school boys, not adults in our leagues.

We have excelled at U-17 and U-20 since 2007, when the late Yemi Tella produced young boys who dazzled the world with their skills. Most members of that glorious squad have disappeared like ice cream under the scorching sun. Again, in the 2009 edition of the FIFA U-17 World Cup which Nigeria hosted, we placed second, with many of those discovered playing in novelty leagues instead of competing with their contemporaries.

We were U-17 champions again in 2013. It is only fair that Siasia makes the bulk of that squad the nucleus of his team. Many would argue that they should be left to graduate into the U-20 side. I have no problem with that, except for the fact the exceptional ones among them, such as Ihenanacho, should be allowed to play for the U-23 side and the Super Eagles, like the English are doing with young lads, such as Raheem Sterling.

Siasia must hit the schools, polytechnics and soccer academies, such as the one run by Kashimawo Laloko, NFF’s youth team programmes and maybe some universities to find boys under the age of 23.

The domestic league has been corrupted with ageing players who ask you which of the ages they belong when you ask such questions. It is easy for them to ask if you want their football ages or their real ones. Such pool cannot help our cause, if we must see players graduate to the Eagles and stay as long as Nwankwo ‘King’ Kanu did.

Talents can be found in the grassroots. Our coaches must face the fact that some of them played for the Eagles while in school. That tradition needs to be sustained, if our coaches can be as adventurous as the likes of Alabi Aissien, Adegboye Onigbinde, Willy Bazuaye, Charles Bassey, the late Udemezue, the late Eto Amechina et al.

We need young players to replace those showing signs of weakness, those who have been in-and-out of injuries and those who have retired. We must stop the recycling of players who have failed us in the past.

Foreign coach for Eagles

I’m a fan of foreign coaches for the Eagles. My support for these foreigners stems from the fact that Nigerian coaches don’t know how to manage success, except for Adegboye Onigbinde; not even Shauibu Amodu. Amodu ranks next to Onigbinde in the sense that he has upgraded himself by attending refresher courses. He accepts mistakes. Amodu’s biggest weapon rests with the fact that he doesn’t blame players openly when the team loses. He takes responsibility for any result, a trait many Nigerian coaches lack.

Our coaches have refused to transit from being players to coaches. They manage the big players’ ego. Rather than take risks by playing fitter and younger players desirous to prove their mettle, they always err on the side of caution by parading our stars who have seen it all. The absence of a will to achieve greater things (motivation to excel) among the players is chiefly responsible for the sloppy style we have seen during Eagles’ matches.

Most Nigerian coaches don’t watch matches involving our players either here or in Europe. They pride themselves in saying that they don’t read the local newspapers nor do they watch television. Little wonder, they goof in their selection by inviting injured players to prosecute our matches.

Need I talk about their medieval times tactics which ridicule them before the players anytime they are asked to groom the Eagles? Our better exposed players mock them after training, having been groomed by experienced European managers. Our players have lifted their game beyond the mediocre level while our coaches still mark time with archaic styles. Europe-based players wouldn’t be able to replicate their club form with the Eagles until our coaches are at par with their European managers in terms of tactics and management.

This is not to say that all European managers are good tacticians. We have failed to get good foreign coaches because we have anchored our search on some unscrupulous Nigerians and their cronies. In other climes, such an exercise is either advertised or the country head-hunts four coaches who are thought to have what they want for the Eagles, for instance.

In picking these four, they have benchmarks and they are ranked based on their individual capabilities. They start by sounding out the best of the four until they get the right one. Indeed, all these processes are kept under wraps until the selected coach has agreed to all the terms for the job. We must learn to do things right to avoid controversies and ensure that the coaches take us seriously.

Thank you Falcons

I don’t hide my love for all our female national teams. They are magicians. When they win matches, I marvel because they barely play the game here. Nigerian female players play the game on empty stomachs. They play for the love of the game. I always join the prayer group when they have their matches.

I’m therefore excited that Falcons have qualified for the senior World Cup in Canada. I pray that many of the players secure better deals in Europe. Indeed, if they get lucrative contracts in Europe, they would serve as models to other parents to encourage their girls to play the beautiful game.

In today’s final game against Cameroon in Windhoek, it is my wish that Falcons lift the trophy again. I want them to be rewarded for their efforts. These girls have been unfairly treated by our sports administrators. Imagine if it was the Super Eagles in the finals of the male version of the Africa Cup of Nations. The Sports Minister would have been resident in Namibia since the quarterfinals day. Government officials would have been roaming the streets in Namibia. The Presidency would have organised telephone interviews between the girls and President Goodluck Jonathan. Such is our sense of balance.

Several governors would have been in Namibia today to support the girls, not forgetting the blue-chip firms struggling for spaces in the newspapers, radio stations and television channels to eulogise the girls.

Lastly, those who ascribed the Super Eagles’ shambolic outing at the Africa Cup of Nations’ qualification matches to the crises at the NFF should, by now, accept that they were wrong, given what our girls have achieved in the continent and the world under the same circumstances. The Falcons have shown skills, patriotism and discipline. Without these, no team can do well. This is the lesson of our dearest girls’ feat.